Starting at 6PM Christmas Eve and running through until Boxing Day, Classic 107 is the soundtrack for your Christmas!

 

Christmas Eve Michael Wolch will start your day, followed by all your favourite day-time shows and hosts. At 6:00 PM (CST) we begin our Christmas juke box with non-stop holiday music---The perfect setting for your Christmas Eve traditions.

 

One of the highlights will be a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service at 7 PM

Held in King's College Chapel, the Festival was introduced in 1918 to bring a more imaginative approach to worship. It was first broadcast in 1928 and is now broadcast to millions of people around the world.

The service includes carols and readings from the Bible. The opening carol is always 'Once in Royal David's City', and there is always a new, specially commissioned carol.

Tune in for an ENCORE presentation of a service from a few years back led by organist and conductor Stephen Cleobury.

 

A CHRISTMAS EDITION OF JAZZ AFTER 9

 At 9 PM we'll have 3 hours of great Christmas jazz music. From Oscar Peterson to the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, we'll be swinging Charistmas Eve until midnight.

 

CHRISTMAS DAY

Golden West Radio has always firmly believed that Christmas Day is a day spent with your family and friends and the one day of the year we  focus on what's most  important. So our gift to you is a full day of completely uninterrupted music.

Some of the highlights of the day include :

9:00 AM Handel's Messiah (HWV 56) The English-language oratorio was composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible, and from the version of the Psalms included with the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on April 13, 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music. We'll hear it performed by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir. Ivars Taurin is at the helm.

 

2:00 PM Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Just like Messiah us synonymous with Christmas, so too is The Nutcracker.  A two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, the legendary score is, of course, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera Iolanta.

Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies for the holiday season. In fact major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.

Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions, in particular the pieces featured in the suite.

 

 (Left to right) Lydia Rubtsova as Marianna, Stanislava Belinskaya as Clara and Vassily Stukolkin as Fritz, in the original production of The Nutcracker (Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, 1892). Photographer unknown.

 We'll hear The Nutcracker performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa

 

7:00 PM  Michael Praetorius' Christmas Mass. Michael Praetorius was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to improve the relationship between Protestants and Catholics.

 

We'll hear the Christmas Mass performed by the Gabrieli Consort & Players led Paul McCreesh.

 

BOXING DAY - DEC 26

On Boxing Day, we continue our holiday juke box of music with highlights that include:

10:00 AM Ralph Vaughan Williams' Hodie. This cantata was composed between 1953 and 1954, and it was Vaughan Williams' last major choral-orchestral composition. It was premiered under his baton at Worcester Cathedral, as part of the Three Choirs Festival on September 8, 1954. The piece is dedicated to Herbert Howells. The cantata, in 16 movements, is scored for chorus, boys' choir, organ and orchestra, and features tenor, baritone, and soprano soloists.

Vaughan Williams c. 1920

 The London Symphony Orchestra, Westminster Abbey Choir and Bach Choir join forces on the recording we're going to hear , led by David Wilcox.

 

3:00 PM  The Oratorio de Noël, Opus 12, by Camille Saint-Saëns, also known as Christmas Oratorio. This is a cantata-like work scored for soloists, chorus, strings and harp. While an organist at Madeleine, Saint-Saëns wrote the oratorio in less than a fortnight, completing it ten days before its premiere on Christmas 1858. The vocal score of this oratorio was prepared later by the composer and organist Eugene Gigout, a colleague of Saint-Saëns.

Saint-Saëns chose several verses from the Latin Vulgate Bible for the text of the work. "While these texts are not from a single source, it is clear that the traditional church liturgies surrounding Christmas influenced Saint-Saëns. About half of the texts he chose match different portions of two Christmas Offices: the First Mass at Midnight and the Second Mass at Dawn." One author calls the work "a musical enhancement of the words of the [Christmas] Office, without interest in the human drama."

The narrative portion of the text, taken from the second chapter St. Luke, appears in the second movement and tells the portion of the traditional Christmas story involving the Shepherds. The remainder of the texts, taken from John, Isaiah, Lamentations, and the Psalms, reflect upon the meaning and significance of the event.

 

7:00 PM And finally, we end our Classic Christmas with L'enfance du Christ Opus 25, an oratorio by the French composer Hector Berlioz, based on the Holy Family's flight into Egypt (Gospel of Matthew 2:13). Berlioz wrote his own words for the piece. Most of it was composed in 1853 and 1854, but it also incorporates an earlier work La fuite en Egypte (1850). It was first performed at the Salle Herz, Paris on 10 December 1854, with Berlioz conducting and soloists from the Opéra-Comique: Jourdan (Récitant), Depassio (Hérode), the couple Meillet (Marie and Joseph) and Bataille (Le père de famille).

Berlioz described L'enfance as a Trilogie sacrée (sacred trilogy). The first of its three sections depicts King Herod ordering the massacre of all newborn children in Judaea; the second shows the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus setting out for Egypt to avoid the slaughter, having been warned by angels; and the final section portrays their arrival in the Egyptian town of Sais where they are given refuge by a family of Ishmaelites. Berlioz was not religious as an adult but remained all his life susceptible to the beauty of the religious music that had enraptured him as a child. L'enfance also shows some influence from the Biblical oratorios of Berlioz's teacher Jean-François Le Sueur.

Berlioz's music was usually received with great hostility by Parisian audiences and critics, who generally accused it of being bizarre and discordant. Yet L'enfance du Christ was an immediate success and was praised by all but two critics in the Paris newspapers. Some attributed its favourable reception to a new, gentler style, a claim Berlioz vigorously rejected:

In that work many people imagined they could detect a radical change in my style and manner. This opinion is entirely without foundation. The subject naturally lent itself to a gentle and simple style of music, and for that reason alone was more in accordance with their taste and intelligence. Time would probably have developed these qualities, but I should have written L'enfance du Christ in the same manner twenty years ago.

The work has maintained its popularity, especially at Christmas.

 

Charles Dutoit conducts the Montreal Symphony and Choir.

 

We hope you enjoy the special works we've put together for you this Christmas! And thank you for making Classic 107 the soundtrack for your Holiday Season!

All your regular programming and hosts return on Sunday Dec 27 starting with White Light hosted by Simoen Rusnak.